Play Dead author Ryan Brown discusses his novel Play Dead and how he came to be involved with Doug Sakmann and Backseat Conceptions. Also, Ryan’s son Raff talks about his involvement with the book. Interview excerpt from the upcoming reality feature directed and produced by Joe Frantz (MTV’s Jackass, Viva La Bam, Bam’s Unholy Union).

Play Dead will be a part of the NYC Zombie Crawl festivities on Sunday, May 30th in Williamsburg, Brooklyn! Before the afterparty at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn there is a free meet and greet with ‘Play Dead’ author Ryan Brown as well as the cast and crew of ‘Play Dead: The Movie”, and you can even buy copies of his book and have him sign it! Also, we’ll be premiering the ‘Redband’ trailer for Play Dead as well as selected scenes from the movie!

This is a first for the NYC Zombie Crawl that the whole event is all ages…and the best part is there will still be booze if you are over 21! Entry for all events is free except there is a $10 cover for the final screening and dance party!

It all starts in Brooklyn at 3pm at The Charleston174 Bedford Ave (Between N 7th & N 8th) Brooklyn, NY 11211 – The first stop and the crawl event FREE and is ALL AGES! Zombies can eat pizza and drink booze (if you’re over 21+) while civilians are zombified for two hours!

We’ll have our zombie technicians on hand to zombify the crowd but we also encourage civilians to come zombified as well as we will be doing a zombie costume contest! We also encourage a sports/varsity theme in honor of Play Dead, so bring out your best undead jocks, cheerleaders and football players! The crawl will start about 5:00pm and go into the evening before ending at the official after party at 7:00pm!

At 5:00pm, the zombies will mobilize up Bedford Ave and head to:
McCarren Park – N 12th and Bedford – Zombie Football Game – Blood Fights, Human Tug O War with Disgraceland Hook Squad and more madness! Win prizes including DVD’s from Backseat Conceptions!

At 6:30pm, the zombies will mobilize again and head back down Bedford avenue for grand zombie parade to the final stop:

7:00pm – Zombie Dance Party A Go-Go with Play Dead, Ryan Brown and the Raspberry BrothersKnitting Factory Brooklyn – 361 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11211
– Free book signing and meet and greet from 7-8pm with author Ryan Brown and the Cast and Crew of Play Dead: The Movie
– $10 after 8pm for the Zombie Dance Party A Go-Go which includes:

– PLAY DEAD premiere screening of the Redband trailer and some selected scenes
– The Raspberry Brothers, a team of NYC comedians who will mock the hell out of campy old zombie flicks (MST3k stylee), including clips from Zombie (Lucio Fulci, 1979) and the Crazies (George Romero, 1973) and more!
– Zombie Dance Party with DJ Jeremy Bastard (Trash, NC-17) with zombie go-go dancers, a hot zombie contest, live music and more madness to be announced!
The zombies from THRILL THE WORLD, the Michael Jackson’s Thriller-dance-around-the-world-on-the-same-day-at-same-time event who will be coming out to teach people the thriller dance and we’ll be doing a dance and sing-along! We’ll be doing sing-alongs to other classic Monster hits too!

Stay tuned to www.nyczombiecrawl.com for the official routing and more announcements about entertainment and other goodies being added!

The Vegetarian Star has picked up on director Doug Sakmann’s response to their initial article about using real animal parts for scenes in ‘Play Dead’. There is now a thread going on about the moral and ethical issues this may raise for vegetarians and other people! Head on over there and give your two cents, we’d love to hear it!

“Unlike meat used for food, dead animal props isn’t a common requirement for most films, so the industry probably isn’t spending millions of dollars on it. What do you guys think?

Should we not make such a fuss of using real meat this way in movies and instead focus energy on ensuring live animals aren’t being abused or hurt in the entertainment industry?”

Here are some responses:

“If these animals evolved to a level of sentience equal to that of people they would no doubt have scores of their ranks aspiring to contribute to the world of art and film just like us people. Mr. Sakmann is only following in the steps first taken by the famous Body Worlds exhibit and the controversial yet highly respected work of Joel-Peter Witkin, except he has opened the spotlight up to animals of all walks, not just us highly evolved apes. This should be heralded as a feather in the cap (a feather found on the ground and not pulled from a living bird) for animal activists who should be looking to end discrimination against animals in the art world.

I’m a 15 year veg, and I think this is a great thing.”

“its dead people eating dead animals, see it would be bad if they were alive because that would just be…. terrible, live eating the dead.also the footprint (carbon) of a plastic prosthetic is probably 10 fold greater than a chunk of flesh, and i am sure the parts were given to the horses to eat in the end because all horses tun into jello in the end anyway, so it was a dead on dead then animal on animal crime, no one loses except vegetarians and the local chineses restaurant.”

“Here we show the first images of PLAY DEAD , the film that is driving crazy Doug Sakmann. (???)

When a football team is killed by the opposing team, a witch of the place brings gamers dead back to life turned into zombies so they can defeat their opponents in the last game and by the way, save their own souls.”

“Play Dead is a new zombie comedy that combines the football fanaticism of Friday Night Lights with the horror of Night of the Living Dead.

A high school football team is murdered by a rival team in a football obsessed town. A witch brings them back to life to take the championship and save their own souls, complete with gory play by plays.

In this clip, director Doug Sakmann makes a horse corpse from meat bought from a supermarket.

Completely disgusting and uncalled for, especially considering how easy it is to make fake flesh props for the screen like those used in Suck.

Feel sorry for actress Kate Boyer, who’s standing around the mess and is reportedly a vegan.”

In the Behind-the-scenes of Play Dead, Director Doug Sakmann discusses the shots and setups with Stunt coordinator Tim Cronin, Director of Photography Jarred Alterman and Assistant Director Evan Meszaros. Sakmann also works with his SPFX team to set up and create a zombie footballer getting tackled so hard his head flies off!

“In the below exclusive clip from behind-the-scenes of Play Dead, Director Doug Sakmann discusses the setups with Director of Photography Jarred Alterman and Assistant Director Evan Meszaros and also works with his SPFX team to set up and create a zombie footballer getting tackled so hard his head flies off!

Play Dead: The Movie stars newcomers Brandon Jones as the Killington Jackrabbits star quarterback Cole Logan and Kate Boyer as ace reporter Savannah Hickham, as well as Chris Gonzales and Michael O’Conner as Booker and Manny of the evil opposing team the Elmwood Badgers. The project also features genre actors Monique “Gata” Dupree (Satan Hates You, Skeleton Key 2) as the mysterious Black Mona and J.D Brown (Wicked Lake, The Burnt House) as Coach Hickham.“

What happens when you mix the zombie comedy mayhem of Shaun of the Dead with the teenage wonder years of “Friday Night Lights”? You get a movie with a football team on the prowl to score a bite out of your ass along with their touchdown. Are you ready to Play Dead?

The film which has been directed and produced by Doug Sakmann in association with Backseat Conceptions and is based on the novel of the same name by Ryan Brown. The novel Play Dead is set to be released by Simon and Schuster nationwide on May 4th 2010.

DISCLAIMER

Play Dead is a zombie football novel written by Ryan Brown, available now from Gallery Books. This website and the Play Dead trailer and Behind the scenes videos were created by Backseat Conceptions under the direction of Doug Sakmann as part of a viral marketing campaign to market the Play Dead novel. The film rights to make a feature ‘Play Dead’ movie are still available to option.